


great truths of growing up

by orphan_account



Series: Snips [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), Star Trek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26055712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Everything really got rolling after Eddie turned thirteen.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Snips [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1891387
Kudos: 6





	great truths of growing up

Everything really got rolling after Eddie turned thirteen.

Before that, he’d been living in some podunk town up in Maine, where most people assumed that a) Starfleet and extraterrestrial life were some abominations of hell, b) the outside world didn’t actually exist, and c) anything could be achieved through sweat, elbow grease, and various other bodily fluids. Eddie spent his days elbow deep in old digital archives about staph and malaria, took his meds, and kept extras in a fanny pack. 

It wasn’t like he _wasn’t_ afraid - the thought of bacteria crawling inside of him, irradiating his insides could make his stomach curl. But after Gretta had essentially told Eddie his mom was full of shit, he’d gotten hot-cold all the way down to his spine. She’d been poking around in her dad’s ancient med reader, and he’d been poking at the floor, wondering why he couldn’t get a summer job. It was electronic fucking archiving; was he going to get sick from PADD viruses?

He’d marched back home, fists balled, heart on jumper cables, ready to yell, to scream, _Why do you do this me, Mom, Mama, WHY -_

His aunt Gretchen had been sitting in the chair he used to watch reruns of Pokemon in. His aunt liked to come over from the next town over to talk about what the best thing for Eddie was. Or supposed to be, anyway. It wasn’t like Eddie knew a shit about his future, but he wasn't running off to space or something. While kids at schools fought over the pre-Starfleet brochures, Eddie sat up straight and got his head the hell out of the clouds. 

“Edward,” Aunt Gretchen said, folding her hands up in her lap, like origami. She never called Eddie anything but _Edward_ , like Eddie was all grown up already. “Your mother had a heart attack.”

Eddie blinked. Wiped his mouth. Blinked again. His mind was suddenly sharp, bright white, everything gone. “What?”

She sighed, rocking back and forth, the plastic sofa cover under her crinkling. “Mr. Finch next door found her; she was making those grapefruit scones, hand-baked and everything, dear. He notified the authorities, thank the stars.”

The way she said it curled sickly sweet, like those fucking scones. Like Eddie was never meant to leave - never meant to breathe and explore - like he was supposed to sit and take his meds and be a good little boy. 

“But don’t worry,” Aunt Gretchen said. “Your mother’s going to be just fine. And you’ll have me here, Edward.”

And everything that had stayed dark and cold and soft in Eddie suddenly turned bright and hot, burning him from the inside out, like he’d been in the fog for his whole life, and was only now seeing the sun.

Logically, maybe he should have been happy his mom wasn’t going to die. Logically, maybe he should be crying right now. Logically, the idea of seeing his mom in the hospital shouldn’t have turned his stomach inside out. 

Eddie lived by checklists and encyclopedias and his head on his shoulders. Eddie did not look at pre-Starfleet brochures. Eddie took his meds and stayed in his room and didn’t do a single thing out of place.

But Eddie also looked at the stars and thought not about the billion ways he could die in space, but seeing all those planets, that whole expanse, like a blank canvas and this time - 

Well. 

Eddie had thought, _Fuck it._

That night, he flushed all his meds down the toilet, every last pill. 

* * *

Richie’s in the medbay and Eddie hasn’t slept for what feels like a week.

“You know, one of the nurses said I’ve broken a record,” he says while Eddie runs a dermal regenerator across his collarbone. Richie’s nose twists and Eddie runs it across a second time, making sure to be gentle. “Does that make me, like, special or something, Dr. K?”

“Get over yourself, Tozier,” he murmurs, but the exhaustion cuts any venom out of his voice. “You lack any hand-eye coordination. It’s an actual concern. Maybe get that checked out.” Richie’s collarbone blooms peach, with a line from the regenerator streaking a single red line. He’d been on an away mission with Bill and Mike, where negotiations with the Maegarians had devolved into Mike getting clocked across the head and Richie in the medbay for the millionth fucking time. 

Eddie needs to check on Mike, who's hanging tight in bay 6, probably charming the pants off of everyone there. Mike’s got a good head; it’s why Bill doesn't go completely nuts, and why most of the time, the ship runs like a dream. Most of the time, anyway. This excludes the time Bev had proposed karaoke on their second shore leave. Richie drunk-singing in Orion, Bill giggling like an idiot every five minutes, and Stan mumbling about birds and dinosaurs was not something Eddie wanted to see again. There were probably also holovids of Ben trying to sing Taylor Swift’s whole discography. Had Ensign White been brewing space coke in the corner? Did that exist? He should know that. Fuck, he should have reported that. 

“Really, Eds? You doing the checking out?” Richie says, and Eddie blinks out, where the regenerator’s still humming across Richie’s collarbone. He swears and swipes some antibiotic cream on it, trying to avoid looking at Richie in the eyes. Richie used to wear chunky, ridiculous coke-bottle frames that he’d gotten half off on some shady site on the nets. They’d been nineteen the time Richie finally got some glasses that weren’t falling apart.

Sometimes, Eddie misses the coke-bottle glasses - misses what they meant. Misses how they were. 

“Eddie,” Richie says, again, his voice a little softer. “You look like - “

“Like shit, I know. I have eyes.” Eddie says, and Richie snorts as he pulls on his uniform shirt. It’s singed at the collar. He needs a new one - Richie’s shirts make up half their inventory at this point, god. 

“Actually,” Richie says, standing up straight. He and Eddie have never been the same height. “I was going to say you look gorgeous, but those eye-bags really wash you out and shit. I read it in Cosmo."

“You read Cosmo,” Eddie says, nonplussed, his brain steering clear of _gorgeous,_ because he’s fluent in Toziertalk and it literally means nothing. "You can get Cosmo here? Why?"

“Yeah! And gendered media can suck it, that's why," Richie says cheerfully. “Before you ask -” he holds a hand up to Eddie’s patent unimpressed look - “I’m not wasting credits on it. I just use the ensigns’ subscription.” 

“The ensigns -” Eddie stops and the rest of the sentence lays unspoken in his head. Wisely, he changes the subject, turning away to consult his PADD. “Those injuries were relatively minor and the regenerator took care of most of them. You’ll need a followup in a week or so, but I don’t see any further issues.” 

“And?” Richie says. 

Eddie turns back and rolls his eyes. “And you need to stop getting nicked up all the time. There’s only so many times you can show up before I have to file a report for excessive medical attention.”

“I knew I was special!” Richie says, fixing his glasses, mouth in a half-moon grin. Eddie likes it when Richie smiles; there’s something about it that Eddie thinks about, when he’s got the time. Which is not now. Obviously.

Then Richie's eyebrows crinkle, and he says, "...wait. Shut up. That's not a real thing."

“It’s form 129, second page, subset B,” Eddie narrates, scrolling through his PADD to access a new report for Mike. “... fourth and fifth questions, I think.”

Richie is staring at him when he looks up, eyes wide. Eddie shrugs, but is secretly pleased, the feeling wrapping around him like a blanket.

“Well,” Richie says, his eyes sparkling. “I’ll do my best to stay safe, Dr. Kaspbrak.” He bumps his shoulder against Eddie’s. 

Eddie sighs but bumps his shoulder back; it’s like their language. Shoulder bumps meaning _okay,_ eye-rolls meaning _what the fuck,_ and other things that Eddie has somehow become fluent in. It lays the patchwork of their friendship, stitch by stitch.

“You do that, Rich,” he says, and Richie gives him a one-fingered salute before he waltzes his way out of the medbay, probably to annoy Bill into getting better translators. Eddie looks at his back, his messy head of curls, something warm shuttering inside of him. He lets himself smile, just a bit, then turns down to his PADD. 

**Author's Note:**

> FYI: ok, so these are two snips of a potential star trek/it au i was gonna write. it was going to be about the losers as a crew on a starship, but the whole thing was really going to be about eddie in the vein of a coming of age story. i think i only wrote eddie growing up in derry, but it could change. i am considering continuing this with a tarsus-esque plot that happened with eddie and some of the other losers in their adolescence. reddie probably would have happened at some point. but yeah! this is sort of disjointed because half of it takes place in eddie's childhood and the other when he's an adult. don't be afraid to drop a comment. thank you so much!


End file.
